


Recruits

by AlterEgon



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bigwig at work - introducing new recruits to what the Owsla is, and to what it is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recruits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grey_sw (grey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/gifts).



> Dear grey_sw,
> 
> I know this is a little on the short side, but I hope that you will like it nevertheless!
> 
> His recruits actually exist, or have at some point existed and live/lived in my family's household, though most of them have in the meantime been recruited by the Black Rabbit of Inlé. So, in memory of a bunch of incredibly cool rabbits...

  
  
Illustration by Rebekah

Thlayli looked over the group of young recruits lined up before him just outside the warren. They were a lively lot for sure. None of them had learned the slightest bit of discipline or self-restraint yet – neither typical rabbit traits, but nevertheless those aspiring to a position in the Owsla needed to learn.

Had he ever been that young and eager for the training, for learning to fight, filled with the recklessness of youth and certain that he would be able to take on everything, anything, that might stand in his way? Maybe he had. He had mentioned those considerations to Blackberry once and he had laughed and told him that he seemed to recall a young buck just starting Owsla training who had bragged to anyone who would listen – and quite a few who would not – about how he would be ready to take on any fox, any cat, any dog even, before winter came. 

Since then, however, he had learned that battle rarely came with the glory that youth saw in it.

He walked forward, taking his place across from the line of recruits.

There was Buttercup, old to start training, from one of their first litters here, who had recently decided that a change was in order for his life. He had the size for the Owsla, certainly, but Bigwig wondered if he would also have the stomach for it.

Crumbs, a young almost black buck with the strangest brown stripe across his behind, his strange colouring probably brought in by the former pet does that they had liberated. He was tall, and retained a lankiness that suggested that he still had not finished growing. His eyes sparkled with anticipation.

Sunshine, grey and bulky, already more muscled than most of his litter mates and yet with a mind so serene that Thlayli could not help but be amazed by the fact that he had chosen Owsla training at all. Certainly, his body suggested that he should, but he had rarely seen a more sweet-tempered rabbit in his life.

Brown Cloverpatch, the runt of his litter, shorter than the others and almost dwarfed by Sunshine's large form next to him. He stood out not only due to his size, but also because of the white marking right behind his ears. 'Please eat me now', some had nicknamed him because of it, seeing how it seemed to form a perfect target for anything looking to spot a rabbit from the air. Out of the lot of them, Cloverpatch was the only one who already had fighting experience, fighting to get what he wanted against the desires of his older siblings, year-mates, other rabbits in the warren. Thlayli had watched him over the course of the last two weeks. There was one agile rabbit in that small body, fast and able to react almost instantaneously. Oh yes, Cloverpatch would do fine in training.

The last new recruit was a doe, rare but not unheard of. Bluebell had every bit of the passion and fire that it took to start Owsla training. Whether she also had the commitment to see it all the way through remained to be seen.

Thlayli stood facing them, his eyes wandering from one to the next, then back, briefly lingering on each of them. Theirs may have been a 'free-and-easy Owsla', but it was an Owsla nevertheless, and they needed to understand what it was they were getting themselves into.

"Good morning," he said once they had finally quieted down and stopped shifting and twitching so much. "And welcome. I hope you are ready for a lot of hard work, because work is what we will be doing here."

They nodded, a bit too enthusiastically.

"From now on," Thlayli explained. "You will spend your days with me or one of the other officers. You will run, jump, learn kicks and rolls and twists. You will go to sleep exhausted and sore from a day of training and wake up in the morning still aching from the last day. Still, you will get right back to it – and if you do not give up, eventually you will be one of our finest, running longer, jumping higher and swerving faster than any other rabbits in the warren. It will be hard work, and only you can say if it's going to be worth putting yourselves through it."

Again he made eye contact with each of the new recruits in turn.

"I will not blame any of you if you leave now – and neither will any of the others."

"What about fighting?" Cloverpatch piped up.

Thlayli cocked his head at him. "Excuse me?"

"You talked about running and jumping and stuff," the young buck replied. "But what about fighting? The Owsla learn how to fight, don't they? They're the most glorious fighters that you could ever imagine, the bravest and the --" he broke off. "Will you teach us how to fight?"

Eagerness mixed with concern in his voice. Oh yes, this was a recruit who had the mind of a warrior, or thought that he did in any case.

"Fighting," Thlayli walked forward, slowly, until his nose almost touched that of the younger rabbit.

"There is fighting training for the Owsla, yes. It might be that you will see battle one day, yes. But one thing that you will not see in fighting is glory." He turned aside, walked down the row of recruits. "There is no glory in fighting. There is only filth and pain and blood and hurt."

Thlayli did not usually flaunt his scars, though he also did nothing to hide them. They were part of him, documents of a hard life lived, battles fought and won. They criss-crossed his snout, ran down the lengths of his sides, left bare patches down by his belly, where he had come close to being gutted. Some of them were shallow, leaving white lines that were now all but disappearing in his greying coat. Others went deeper, like the one along one hind leg that made him have to struggle not to limp on a damp and cool autumn day.

He did present them now, standing so that they could see the tracks of his past clear on his body. Let these youngsters know what they were in for if they wanted to go into battle. No one asked how he had gotten any of them – everyone knew the tale of how he had fought the Efrafa Chief Rabbit Woundwort and come out of it barely alive.

"The glory is only in the tales told after," he said. "Not in the pain when you feel your life running out of your body from gashes in your flesh. It's not in the days and weeks that you drag yourself out of the warren and into the light while you're healing because you know you need plenty of fresh food to replenish your strength, not the limp winter stores that you may find below. It's not in the ache that comes with each storm, reminding you of every single time your body was torn open, broken, abused in battle."

Sitting back down, he looked at them past his whiskers, trying to gauge if he had gotten through to any of them yet. "If you are looking for glory, go and become a poet. Spin the tales of those ugly battles into something the others will like to listen to in the dark season. Have you never wondered why it's never the fighters, the warriors, the Owsla sitting in the front rows and applauding?"

Without waiting, he answered his own question. "Because we know that that is not how it was, not how it is. And we know that all those others would never understand if we told them. So we leave them their stories of splendid glory and fame. I would leave them to you, too, except that you are seeking to join the ranks of the warriors. I want you to understand what it is that you are joining."

He paused.

"We're not in it for glory. We're in it to defend and protect, to keep the warren safe for those who would otherwise be exposed without protection to those who mean them harm. That is not always a dog or a cat. Sometimes, as you well know, it can be other warrens. Sometimes it can even be someone from within the warren. We do what needs doing, and we pay the price for it. Because we know what we do is necessary. But that knowledge – that, and not glory and fame, is all that you will ever get in return."

Now he fell silent, waiting, letting them contemplate what they had just heard.

He did not ask them if they wanted to leave. He did not ask them if they wanted to stay.

Eventually, he merely turned around and started walking off down the hill at a brisk pace.

"Recruits – follow me."

And they did.


End file.
